Peter Nadin, “The Mark Series: The Speaker…Off The Rack”

A notable (if Sphinx-like) fixture of the late-’70s downtown art scene, Peter Nadin made his mark as an artist who, among other things, was part of a collective that included future superstars Jenny Holzer and Richard Prince. He also partnered with artist Christopher D’Arcangelo on a project in which their day jobs hanging sheetrock become the substance of art. Nadin suffered a nervous breakdown precipitated by D’Arcangelo’s suicide in 1979, and though he recovered enough to show his work throughout the 1980s, he walked away from the art world at the start of the’90s, moving Upstate to become a farmer. Nadin’s reticence has always been echoed by the enigmatic, eclectic nature of his output, which combined Conceptualism, Neo-Expressionism, Surrealism and abstraction. In 2011, he staged his first solo show in 20 years at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise; this exhibit represents his first such outing since 2015. It presents the fourth installment of the artist’s “Mark” series, a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk reflecting on art and human nature that has occupied him for 15 years. A summation of the series (which included the initial First Mark at Gavin Brown) it’s a cryptic affair comprising an ensemble of sculptures and found-object assemblages framed by a rambling steel armature that resembles a clothing-store display colliding with a prison cell.